Former Nazi Bank To Rule The Global Economy

Former Nazi Bank To Rule The Global Economy

European Central Bank chief Jean-Claude Trichet’s announcement that the Bank for International Settlements is to become the primary engine for global governance is a shocking admission given the fact that this ultra-secretive menagerie of international bankers was once controlled by top Nazis.

These Nazis, in collusion with global central banks, funneled money through the institution which directly financed Hitler’s war machine.

The GEM is basically a policy steering committee under the umbrella of the Bank for International Settlements. In its current form, the BIS, which itself is not accountable to any national government, is comprised of banking chiefs from global central banks, most of which are private and also have no responsibility to their nation states or their citizens. The board of directors who control the BIS include Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke and Bank of England head Mervyn King, as well as Trichet himself.

So how did the Bank for International Settlements get started? The BIS was founded in 1930 by Governor of The Bank of England, Montague Norman and his German colleague Hjalmar Schacht, who later became Adolf Hitler’s finance minister.

The bank was initially founded in order to facilitate money transfers related to German reparations arising out of the Treaty of Versailles, but by the start of the second world war, the BIS was largely controlled by top Nazi officials, people like Walter Funk, who was appointed Nazi propaganda minister in 1933 before going on to become Hitler’s Minister for Economic Affairs. Another BIS director during this period was Emil Puhl, who as director and vice-president of Germany’s Reichsbank was responsible for moving Nazi gold. Both Funk and Puhl were convicted at the Nuremberg trials as war criminals.

Other BIS directors included Herman Schmitz, the director of IG Farben, whose subsidiary company manufactured Zyklon B, the pesticide used in Nazi concentration camp gas chambers to kill Jews and political dissidents during the Holocaust. IG Farben worked closely with John D. Rockefeller’s United States-based Standard Oil Co during the second world war.

Baron von Schroeder, the owner of the J.H.Stein Bank, the bank that held the deposits of the Gestapo, was also a BIS director during the war period.

As Charles Higham’s widely acclaimed book Trading With The Enemy, How the Allied multinationals supplied Nazi Germany throughout World War Two points out, several parties at the Bretton Woods Conference in July 1944 wanted to see the Bank for International Settlements liquidated, because its role in aiding Nazi Germany loot occupied European countries during the war. Norway called for the bank to be shut down, a view supported by Harry Dexter White, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury and Henry Morgenthau, but the BIS survived despite its highly contentious Nazi influence.

Higham writes that the BIS became, “A money funnel for American and British funds to flow into Hitler’s coffers and to help Hitler build up his machine,” founded by Nazi finance minister Hjalmar Schacht on the basis that the “Institution that would retain channels of communication and collusion between the world’s financial leaders even in the event of an international conflict. It was written into the Bank’s charter, concurred in by the respective governments, that the BIS should be immune from seizure, closure or censure, whether or not its owners were at war.”

“The BIS was completely under Hitler’s control by the outbreak of World War II,” writes Higham. “Among the directors under Thomas H. McKittrick were Hermann Shmitz, head of the colossal Nazi industrial trust I.G. Farben, Baron Kurt von Schroder, head of the J.H. Stein Bank of Cologne and a leading officer and financier of the Gestapo; Dr. Walther Funk of the Reichsbank, and, of course, Emil Puhl. These last two figures were Hitler’s personal appointees to the board.”

Higham details how the gold looted from countries invaded by the Nazis was packed into vaults controlled by the Bank for International Settlements, and how Nazis who controlled the bank then forbade any discussion of the theft.

“The BIS was an instrument of Hitler, but its continuing existence was approved by Great Britain even after that country went to war with Germany, and the British director Sir Otto Niemeyer, and chairman Montagu Norman, remained in office throughout the war,” writes Higham, explaining how Washington State Congressman John M. Coffee objected to American money being invested with the bank in 1944.

“The Nazi government has 85 million Swiss gold francs on deposit in the BIS. The majority of the board is made up of Nazi officials. Yet American money is being deposited in the Bank,” complained Coffee.

In 1948, the BIS was finally compelled to hand over a mere £4 million in looted Nazi gold to the allies, and thanks to people like Harry Truman and the Rockefeller family, the bank was not dissolved. One of its most influential directors, Nazi banker Emil Puhl was later invited to the United States as a guest of honor in 1950.

Despite its inglorious past, the Bank For International Settlements continues today as a major management arm of the global elite. The bank wields power through its control of vast amounts of global currencies. The BIS controls no less than 7% of the world’s available foreign exchange funds, as well as owning 712 tons of gold bullion, presumably a sizeable portion of which is the bullion which was stolen from occupied countries by the Nazis who controlled the bank during the war.